· Blog | Theatre

Frank Castorf: Forever Young

It doesn't happen often that I go and see the same play twice. In Frank Castorf's stage productions there is usually so much going on that going to see it twice is almost required to take it all in.
· Blog | Theatre

Forced Entertainment: Bloody Mess

It is funny. Very funny. Very very funny. But after a while it gets boring. Very boring. But then it gets funny again. Very funny. So funny that you have to laugh. This is what you do when things are funny, especially when they are very funny, not to mention when they are very very funny.
· Blog | Art

Paul McCarthy: Brain Box Dream Box

Rubbing it in is what Paul McCarthy does, whether with paint, ketchup or chocolate sauce. Excess is the name of his game. McCarthy likes pushing things too far, in his drawings, but most of all in his performances, which always end up a complete mess.
· Blog | Theatre

Guy Cassiers: Proust 1 and 3

When Dutch theatre critics wrote of Guy Cassiers' adaptation of Marcel Proust's "A la recherche du temps perdu", that it was a masterpiece and that he was approaching perfection, I was at once curious and skeptical.
· Blog | Literature

Michel Houellebecq: The Elementary Particles

A friend recently told me she had read about a dozen books during an illness and wondered how many books she could have read if she hadn’t partied so much all her life. I have read many books and I often wonder how much I could have lived if I hadn’t read so much.
· Blog | Literature

Djuna Barnes: Nightwood

Nightwood by Djuna Barnes is one of the few books I’ve read more than once. The sentences seem to flow over the pages, at once 'heftig bewegt', then 'utterly tranquil' or 'quietly flowing' as Anton Webern annotated his Five Movements for String Quartet.